Mental Well-Being
Your mental
well-being describes your current mental state such as how you are feeling and
how you cope with your day to day life. This can change constantly though from
day to day. When we are sad, stressed or finding it difficult to cope we can
have a poor mental well-being. There are certain factors that can affect your
mental well-being these factors often have to do with our physical, social or
emotional well-being. If someone has a constant low mental
well-being it is likely that they have a mental health problem. We need to take
care of our mental well-being to make sure we stay healthy and happy.
One important thing you should already be doing to maintain and improve your mental well-being is by valuing and taking care of yourself. Having a positive sense of self is the first step to improving your mental health. This is no small feat though and for a lot of people can’t happen overnight. So to help you I’ll be giving you some good tips on how to learn to accept and love yourself just the way you are.
The first simple thing you can do is to say positive self-talk. Self-talk is what you say to yourself even if it’s not necessarily out loud. The things we tell ourselves can have a big impact on how we handle and perform when faced with a challenge. Though unfortunately, for some people negative self-talk comes naturally where they will constantly be putting themselves down. |
These people will have to train themselves to think more positively instead. Positive self-talk can help us feel better about ourselves and in control, build our confidence and self-esteem and help us make friends. To try and improve your self-talk listen to what you say to yourself, monitor and then change your self-talk. You can cancel out your negative thoughts by saying more positive things. Such as saying ‘I can do this!’ rather than ‘I can’t do this.’
Setting goals and challenges is another effective way of improving our sense of self and therefore our mental well-being. Achieving the goals we set can be extremely motivating and can help us to build our self-confidence. As well as this, it can help increase our self-contentment and our mental health in general. Goals can also give us some sort of direction for what we want to accomplish in the week or even our lifetime. We also need to make sure we set goals that challenge us but are still attainable. By doing this we are well on our way to improving our sense of self and mental well-being.
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Another way to improve your mental health is by taking time to relax and do things you enjoy. Since school and our extra-curricular activities takes up a big part in our lives we often forget stop and take time for ourselves. One way we can do this is by having at least 5 minutes to ourselves each day with no distractions. Relaxing has been proven to reduce stress and help us keep a clear mind. This can be really beneficial considering how cluttered our minds get during the day. Having a hobby or doing things you enjoy can also be very valuable. Having a hobby can help diminish stress, fight depression, improve your memory as well as improving social aspects. Besides this doing something we can enjoy is fun and something we can look forward to on after a tough day.
Talking about how we feel is a great way to improve your mental well-being. By building positive and healthy relationships with others, talking about how we feel can be a whole lot easier. By doing this we can also build a whole support network that we can use whenever we’re going through a tough time in our lives. Talking to those close to us helps us safely vent feelings that we may have otherwise kept pent up. Talking to people who are close to us makes it easier for us to share, knowing you can trust the person you are sharing with. Likewise having a bigger support group can be a lot more beneficial. Sometimes we find it easier to talk about some topics with a certain person rather than others. With a big support group we can rest assured that there will always be someone there that we are willing to talk with. Talking also involves practices such as attention, control and memory which are often lacking with people who have a mental-illness.